What should I buy? A gaming laptop or desktop.

One of the most commonly faced dilemmas by gamers when setting out to purchase new gaming machines is whether to get themselves a desktop or a laptop gaming station? Given that the two will essentially provide you with a platform to showcase your gaming skills, I’ll give you a rundown on what my observations have been over the years.

Given that fact that in any purchase you’re probably working on a budget, it’s important to identify what your budget scope is. Laptops tend to be more expensive than their desktop counterpart. This is because other than the mobility factor which is an added advantage to the laptop, the technology behind its making is also expensive. So, if you’re working on a small budget, a desktop would be more appropriate for you since it will allow you to get a considerably good gaming desktop rather than settling for a cheap gaming laptop that might not meet all your needs.

Additionally, when it comes to upgrading your machine, the desktop is a better investment. The simple reason being that a desktop is basically a working station that has all its components individually separated whereas, in a laptop, they are combined together. That being said, it’s fairly easy to upgrade a desktop to get the features you are looking for. For example, if you’re looking to have better graphics, all you have to do is change your graphics card. If you’re looking to have a faster processor, all you have to do is change the CPU. Get the gist? The laptop, on the other hand, is simply something whose features you’re stuck with from purchase and whose attempts at upgrading, especially in terms of hardware are relatively more expensive in comparison to that of the desktop.

Moreover, when it comes to CPU and GPU performance, the workstation architecture also plays a big role. Due to their considerably small sizes, most of the functionalities in a laptop are scaled down in a bid to both fits in the space allocated and to minimize of the heat they produce due to lack of enough cooling systems. In that regard, the CPU and GPU performance in the laptop in comparison to their desktop counterpart still have a long way to go before catching up. Since the components on the desktop are ta their full working potential, the gaming experience on the desktop does tend to be much better than on a laptop.

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys gaming on the go, then getting yourself a laptop would certainly be the option to go for. A high-quality gaming laptop will certainly beat the usage of a desktop on any given day since a desktop is not mobile. Why hold yourself back from enjoying a game out on the road?

However, even if you’re looking for portability, you need to understand that desktops generally have more power and offer you with more flexibility when it comes to your workstation. The components tend to be standalone which means that you never have to worry about petty things like your machine slowing down due to overheating. Being a compact machine, a laptop is generally prone to such things and might prove to be unreliable especially if you’re handling games that require a workstation that can handle taking up a lot of power at any given time.

When it comes to gaming, having a constant power supply is pretty much an essential. This is because when games are being run they take up a good amount of your workstation power and for games that are pretty much power intensive, optimum performance cannot occur on a low power workstation. That being said, you’ll find yourself gaming in an immobile workstation. Whether you’re using a laptop or a desktop, you’ll pretty much find yourself gaming next to a reliable power source. Even the best gaming laptops can only run for as long as five hours before the battery runs low. Given that, if you know that most of your gaming sessions will happen indoors, it’s probably best to get yourself a gaming desktop.

In my opinion, based on the above, I believe it’s better to invest in getting yourself a gaming desktop. However, at the end of the day, you get to decide what works best for you, based on your immediate and long-term needs as a gamer.